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Alberto Gonzales and the Texas Death Memos

Before suggesting that Alberto Gonzales is an acceptable Supreme Court nominee, I encourage you to read about his role as advisor to President Bush on clemency decisions. Objecting may be pointless, as TChris points out in the comments here, but that doesn't mean we have to give him a thumbs-up:

If he had a prosecutorial bias in a job that required him to provide a dispassionate and even-handed evaluation of a conviction and death sentence, it stands to reason that he would have a pro-prosecution bias if appointed to the Supreme Court. That alone should disqualify him, although it wasn't enough to stop the appointments of Rehnquist, Thomas, Kennedy, etc.

Don't miss the full Alan Berlow article in the Atlantic Monthly, available free here. He begins:

As the legal counsel to Texas Governor George W. Bush, Alberto R. Gonzales, now the White House counsel, and widely regarded as a likely future Supreme Court nominee, prepared fifty-seven confidential death-penalty memoranda for Bush's review. Never before discussed publicly, the memoranda suggest that Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise Bush of some of the most salient issues in the cases at hand

Nat Hentoff had this Village Voice column on Gonzales and the death memos. John Dean weighs in here.

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    Re: Alberto Gonzales and the Texas Death Memos (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:02 PM EST
    as a health care provider who is 100% pro-Roe, i appreciate the point you bring up here. there are many issues other than Roe that should be near and dear enough to the left, enought so to serve as "litmus tests" even. human rights, in my opinion, is at the top of the list.

    Re: Alberto Gonzales and the Texas Death Memos (none / 0) (#2)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:03 PM EST
    jeralyn, thanks for bringing up the 57 memos. one of the big problems i had with bush as my former governor was the callous attitude he took toward reviewing death penalty cases. he used to claim that he fairly reviewed each case, but IIRC i read that he spent a whopping five minutes on average reviewing each case.

    Re: Alberto Gonzales and the Texas Death Memos (none / 0) (#3)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:03 PM EST
    It's disappointing for this Republican to learn about the one-sided reviews. I'm against Gonzalez for the Supreme Court.

    Re: Alberto Gonzales and the Texas Death Memos (none / 0) (#4)
    by Dadler on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:03 PM EST
    Where is Howard Dean now? As leader of the party, he should be out there every day talking about these nominations, talking about Gonzales and these memos, talking and talking, selling and selling. He is the one who should be leading the charge against extremist nominees, connecting their nominations to the same lying, pathetic excuse for a mind (Dubya's) whose idiotic war is THE SINGLE MOST POWERFUL PIECE OF EVIDENCE that this president is not capable or qualified to make decisions like these. But where is he? Also, the Dems should NOT be afraid to hold up all nominations for as long as it takes, even if that means we in effect shut down the court. In other words, we better show how much AND EXACTLY AND CLEARLY WHY these noms MUST be the most contested in the history of the nation. Unless we really don't feel stongly or passionately about this.

    Re: Alberto Gonzales and the Texas Death Memos (none / 0) (#5)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:06 PM EST
    The suggestion that Dean improves things by rolling around on deck with his cannon barrel in full swing mistakes his current role. He has a job that requires that he fundraise and build the party, not that he singlehandedly try to oppose this coup and being a lightning rod for R hatred and death threats. We don't have the votes to stop Genghiz Bush's nominees, that should be obvious. The Dems are doing a fair job with very little to work with. The most important issue is the VOTE, not the SCOTUS. If we don't regain control of the ELECTIVE part of government, we can hardly expect to stop the nominee process. Thirty states have no paper trail -- California is getting another rush special election, for $80 million smackers, one month before we get a paper trail again. And they are fighting the paper trail law, and fighting to put in MORE vote-fraud equipment. As for Iraq, this 'idiotic war' is in fact a callous, long-age pre-arranged CONSPIRACY and GENOCIDE to install airbases. It is not stupid to do such acts, so much as it is sociopathic, and a capital crime. The extent of this coup cannot be fairly characterized by the idea that it is 'idiotic.' It is evil, and the evil has infected this government nearly to the point of civil war HERE, not just there. "There is no more Iraq; there will be three territories." -- H. F* Kissinger, early 2004 "Anything short of putting snipers on the roofs of DC would be an underreaction by the left." -- Grover Norquist, friend of the Taliban

    Re: Alberto Gonzales and the Texas Death Memos (none / 0) (#6)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:06 PM EST
    Oops: long-age = long-ago